Alan Brazil shared that only his doctors finding a ‘perfect match’ for his liver transplant stopped him from having just ‘weeks to live’ during his candid return to talkSPORT after undergoing surgery.
The broadcasting legend was back on the airwaves almost four months after illness forced him to take a break and undergo life-saving surgery.
Brazil has since been recovering but announced that he was rejoining his flagship program the day before returning to the studio on Wednesday morning at 6am.
‘I am not going to bore everyone but it is remarkable really what happened,’ Brazil explained to co-host Gabby Agbonlahor. ‘One minute I am doing this (the programme), I’ve finished at 9.45am, there’s a car outside and I am like “what’s going on?”
‘Straight down to Addenbrooke’s Hospital and a few hours later… wallop. They open me up and stick a new liver in there. So I did have cancer in my liver and we suspected that for months to be honest, but they didn’t want to go in and touch it and shake it up in case you could make it spread.
‘First of all they said the perfect match came in, otherwise I might still be waiting and people will know what I am talking about who might be on the list. You can wait 18 months, you can go down there, get ready to have the (operation) and they say “it’s not quite right, go away and come back and we will phone you later, maybe in a few weeks” and it can be murder.
Alan Brazil opened up on feeling he was a ‘goner’ after being diagnosed with liver cancer
‘I was so lucky, I went down there and they said “we’ve got one and it looks perfect so we are going to do it now”. They inject you all over and you have to sign a few forms, you get carried in there and it’s like “goodbye everyone”, that’s how bad it was. I thought “see you later”. Wife’s in tears, it was horrible.
Brazil continued, adding that he was at the stage where had he not had the transplant quickly, it would have been ‘see you later’.
‘I didn’t realise it was that extreme but it was. They told me, another couple of weeks and you were gone,’ he shared. ‘I had seven or eight hours on there, the fluid build-up I had was horrendous.
‘They cut me open and there was a flood, it was that bad everywhere I had it. I did have a few complications, my heart stopped for 40 seconds. I said “did you get the old jump-leads on?” He said “no, no. It came back. We were about to take action but it came back.”‘
Brazil added that his immune system was not particularly strong and that he is on a ‘massive’ amount of pills.
The 67-year-old was also told to stay out of the sun.
‘So I was down in Spain for a week, my favourite bars, my favourite beaches – forget it! I was like a monk in the shade with my book,’ he quipped. ‘It’s boring.’
But Brazil admitted what had kept him going in part was kind messages from friends and colleagues.
‘And a lot of talkSPORT during my recovery,’ he said. ‘I’m still not 100 per cent, but listen, anything, even if I don’t get any better, it’s a bonus.
‘Because I was a goner.’
